


paris is burning

by Rethira



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2662424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ah," Grantaire said. "A phoenix."</p>
            </blockquote>





	paris is burning

**Author's Note:**

> "if enjolras was a phoenix; if grantaire was a centaur"

He was always meant to burn.

 

Grantaire woke to silence. He’d slept through cannon and gunfire, through the screams of the dead and the dying. He’d slept through laughter and tears – he’d slept with the air of one determined to never wake up again.

But he woke to silence.

And there was Enjolras, radiant against the wall, fire burning beneath his skin, while a half dozen guardsmen pointed rifles at him.

Grantaire rose with a clatter; his hooves knocked the bottles about him, and he was almost shot there and then. “Long live the Republic,” he said. “Long live the Republic. I am one of them.” He stepped out from the table almost daintily, as though his hooves were light and delicate, and not as large about as soup plates. All eyes were upon him; Enjolras’, still lit with the flames of revolution, burned brighter still as Grantaire approached.

“Finish us both with one blow,” Grantaire said, coming to stop before Enjolras. He did not look towards the guardsmen at all. “If you permit it?” he asked.

The fire that blazed within Enjolras burst free; he clasped Grantaire’s hand and smiled.

The smile had not yet ended when the volley rang out. Nor had the fire; it stole up Grantaire’s fallen arm, licked over his clothes and began to consume him. Beside him, Enjolras burnt brighter still, the smile still plain upon his face.

 

“I am High Magistrate and Master of the Hunt!” proclaimed Grantaire, wheeling on his hooves. Matelote shrieked as Grantaire lifted her bodily from the floor and spun her round.

It was this that finally seemed to spur Enjolras into action. He turned where he stood, high upon the barricade, and called, “Grantaire, go and sleep your wine off somewhere else. This is neither the time nor the place for your drunkenness. You dishonour the barricade.”

Enjolras’ words were as effective as if Grantaire had dunked his head in a bucket of water. He stopped abruptly, setting Matelote down. He swayed on his feet before settling in a corner beside the window, half behind a table. Speaking softly, Grantaire replied, “You know I believe in you.”

“Go away.”

“Let me sleep here,” Grantaire asked.

“Go and sleep somewhere else,” said Enjolras.

Grantaire’s eyes took on a troubled cast; he looked upon Enjolras with indescribable gentleness and said, “Let me sleep here. Let me die here.”

Enjolras looked scornfully up at him. He blazed. An inferno given human form. “Grantaire, you’re incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.”

A faint smile appeared on Grantaire’s face. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You will see,” he murmured, gravely.

He shifted slightly, easing his hooves beneath him, and laid his head down upon the table. Within a few moments, he was fast asleep.

 

Joly and Bossuet moved around him – in Bossuet’s case this necessitated clambering over Grantaire’s recumbent hindquarters. “It might be midnight,” he muttered. “I can’t see a thing. Gibelotte, fetch a light!”

Grantaire drank. At length he murmured, “Enjolras disdains me. He said to himself, ‘Joly’s ill and Grantaire’s drunk. I’ll send the boy to Bossuet.’ If he’d come after me himself- might as well have led me on a rope. I’d have followed him. Ah, to hell with Enjolras! I’ll not go to his funeral.”

This last drew a strained chuckle each from Bossuet and Joly; the matter decided, the three of them stayed in the tavern.

 

The look on Enjolras’ face was fit to kindle flame; beside Grantaire, his new friend blithely tossed another of Grantaire’s shoes, and clucked loudly over the clang of metal.

 

When Grantaire returned to the Musain, he was clad in a Robespierre waistcoat. “Red,” he said, looking seriously at Enjolras. “Be easy,” he murmured, and failed to mention the red saddlecloth he had left behind.

Enjolras favoured Grantaire with a long, assaying look. He said nothing. Grantaire nodded once, smoothing his waistcoat down, and calmly trotted away.

 

“Be serious,” Enjolras said.

“I am wild,” Grantaire replied.

 

“Are you good for anything?” Enjolras asked, a trace of doubt in his words.

“I have a vague ambition in that direction,” Grantaire replied, stirring to his feet.

“You do not believe in anything.”

Grantaire shrugged. “I believe in you.”

A frown crossed Enjolras’ face. “Grantaire, will you do me a service?”

“Anything. Ride me.”

Enjolras’ frown deepened. “Don’t meddle in our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.”

Grantaire’s eyes were soft. “You are a terrible ingrate, Enjolras,” he murmured.

 

“You would make of us a phoenix too,” Grantaire said. He panted harshly, and stood with his four legs splayed wide across the cobbles. “You would light a flame – you have lit a flame, lit a spark between their ribs.”

“That is their own fire,” Enjolras replied. “They burn themselves; they fan their own flames. I light nothing.”

“You will burn,” Grantaire repeated.

Enjolras did not deny it.

 

“Yours shall make a fine funeral pyre,” Grantaire said. “We shall place you upon it, and then a new you shall burst forth and call us not by our names, nor respond to yours, and it shall be as if we are strangers once more.”

Enjolras snarled, fit for a wolf or lion, and proclaimed, “I can no more change the fact of my being than you can walk straight down a street!”

Grantaire’s eyes lit at that. “A challenge then! I shall walk straight down a street, and you shall become an elf in return.”

He did not of course; Grantaire downed absinthe like water, his straight line curved about the middle, wobbled towards the end, and eventually led him to a water barrel, whereupon he dunked his head.

Enjolras turned away.

 

“What a fine statue,” Grantaire commented. Flame danced in Enjolras’ eyes. Fire burnt upon his tongue. How many would fall before him?

 

Grantaire lay at Enjolras’ feet – his shoes dug into his sides, and his tail was half caught under his thigh. He still came up to Enjolras’ stomach, and had to crane his head to meet Enjolras’ eyes. Despite this, Grantaire insisted the position was comfortable, and would refuse to argue with Enjolras while he stood upon his feet.

If pressed, he might say that men were intimidated by him. If pressed further, he might mention an accident a long time ago, when he was young.

If Enjolras asked, Grantaire might relate a story about an accident, an argument, a death.

But Enjolras did not ask.

Grantaire rested, uncomfortably comfortable, at his feet; he watched Enjolras in adoration.

 

When Grantaire had first entered Paris, which, he fondly told _Les Amis_ , had been some ten or fifteen years ago, he’d carried nothing with him but the bags upon his back. One of the guardsmen had stopped him at the gate, scoffing loudly, and demanded where he’d tossed his rider.

This was, not coincidentally, also the tale of how Grantaire first got in trouble with the law, on account of how he’d exclaimed loudly to have never worn a saddle in his life, and then punched the guard in the face.

He’d been lucky to escape without a sentence, although Grantaire attributed that to the fact that even the slowest centaur is faster than the average human. Subsequently he’d spent a few days hiding in a stable, until he found decent lodgings.

It was about this time that he met Irma Boissy, the prettiest boot-embroider of the time, who declared Grantaire to be impossible in his ugliness. This Grantaire attributed to his parentage; his father had been a squat pony, while his mother had stood 16 hands high at the lower shoulder and built like a Friesian. How they had coupled, Grantaire knew not, nor did he care to meditate upon. But couple they had, and their union had brought forth Grantaire, who bore his mother’s build on stumpy legs, and had his father’s rough, patchy coat.

It was thus understood that Grantaire had little in the way of dalliances; pretty _grisettes_ turned from him. Flattered young men hid their distaste behind laughter. Prostitutes claimed they had a client waiting. Grantaire had heard it all. He often jested that it wasn’t his ugliness that sent them running, but fear of his hindquarters – depending on their moods, his friends would either laugh along or comment on how unfair it was for Grantaire to be turned away on account of his physiology.

It should surprise no-one that Enjolras fell firmly into the latter category.

 

“Ah,” Grantaire said, regarding Enjolras with curious gentleness. “I see.” He smiled. “A phoenix.”

**Author's Note:**

> yes, whole scenes are shamelessly stolen from the brick with only minor alterations ("ride me")
> 
> there is a theory that grantaire is meant to be a representation of paris itself; _paris is burning_ is a song by st. vincent
> 
> for more information re: phoenixes, centaurs and other(s), see [here](http://kratosaurioned.tumblr.com/post/103299011390/mythological-creature-les-mis-au-more-okay-so)


End file.
